For driving hybrid and electric vehicles, electric machines in the form of polyphase machines are usually used which are operated in conjunction with pulse-controlled inverters, often also referred to as inverters. In this case, the electric machines are operated optionally in motor or generator mode. In motor mode, the electric machine generates a drive torque which supports, when used in a hybrid vehicle, an internal combustion engine during an acceleration phase, for example. In generator mode, the electric machine generates electrical energy which is stored in an energy storage unit, e.g., a traction battery. A DC link capacitor is provided to stabilize the battery voltage. The operation mode and performance of the electric machine are adjusted via the pulse-controlled inverter. The pulse-controlled inverter includes a power semiconductor circuit breaker, in the following referred to in short as power circuit breaker, e.g., MOSFETs (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors), IGBTs (insulated gate bipolar transistors) or MCTs (MOS controlled thyristors), which are controlled in a potential-separating manner via a gate driver circuit.
In the hybrid and electric vehicle market, pulse-controlled inverters of very different performance and current categories are demanded. In order to increase the performance of a pulse-controlled inverter, multiple pulse-controlled inverters are connected in parallel (cf., European Patent No. EP 0 511 344 B1, for example). A higher-level gate driver circuit may be used here which is suitable to control multiple pulse-controlled inverters connected in parallel, or multiple pulse-controlled inverter modules, including the associated gate driver circuits, are connected in parallel.